It is certainly surprising in this kaleidoscopic world whose pattern is constantly changing as time merges one combination of its elements into another, that on the other side of the globe this set should have remained the same.

Yet in spite of the lapse of years, in spite of the altered conditions of existence, in spite of an immense advance in civilization, such a primitive state of society has continued there to the present day, in all its essentials what it was when as nomads the race forefathers wandered peacefully or otherwise over the plains of Central Asia.

The principle helped them to expand; it has simply cramped them ever since.

For, instead of dissolving like other antiquated views, it has become, what it was bound to become if it continued to last, crystallized into an institution.

It had practically reached this condition when it received a theoretical, not to say a theological recognition which gave it mundane immortality.